@vandyke4ad@mas.to
@vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

vandyke4ad

@vandyke4ad@mas.to

Tories out. Indie music, veggie, railways, diy, walking. #FBPE #FBR Twitter https://mas.to/@vandyke4ad 🚫 DMs from new followers, 🚫crypto Instagram @barryp4ad
Threads @barryp4ad

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jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

While walking around the 18ème in Paris this morning… there’s a car someone wiped out in the night. Petrol still dripping, indicators still flashing.

vandyke4ad,
@vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

@25kV @jon It’s a Renault.

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

“Mesdames et Messieurs, votre correspondance a été assurée par… OpenRailwayMap”

TER arrives Dijon 10 mins late

12 mins planned connection time becomes 2 mins

Does train manager help at all with connections? No. Not even an apology for the delay announcement

But I know I arrive Voie 3, and depart Voie F. Thanks to OpenRailwayMap I can deduce 3 is a terminus track, exit right, front of the train - for shortest dash to underpass to F

And it worked!

vandyke4ad,
@vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

@DiegoBeghin @jon We missed our train to Toulon the first time we used Gare de Lyon.
it was leaving from Voie I. Which we mistakenly thought was 1.
Having discovered that there was no “Voie 1”, we ran back to the lettered platforms to see our train departing.
These days, I think it’s labelled as “Voie i”, which is an improvement.

kaia, to random
@kaia@brotka.st avatar

the University of London leaked my email address to 3rd party spam senders. I know because I made a new one and they were the first I shared it with

vandyke4ad,
@vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

@lain @kaia @hakui Our domain host (UK2.net) used to allow this, but stopped ten years (or more) ago.
Although this allowed users (inc. me) to invent email addresses like your “carpet@” example, spammers did the same, by adding their own prefix@ to UK2-hosted domain names.

jon, (edited ) to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

SNCF and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, really, can you mess it up any more?

TER Nuits-sous-Ravières - Laroche-Migennes - Auxerre arrives Laroche-Migennes just 1 minute before the Clamecy - Laroche-Migennes - Paris Bercy train departs

Too tight to connect 😡

So I will have to take the 06:21 train instead. Thanks SNCF, that’ll be a 05:15 alarm ⏰

vandyke4ad,
@vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

@jon In 2009, the ticket desk at Athens station, for booking the Thessaloniki to Istanbul sleeper*, didn’t open until 1:30pm. This was half an hour after the last train from Athens to Thessaloniki that would get you there in time to catch the sleeper.

  • it was the second-hand Greek one we caught. The Turkish one was nicer, apparently.
RickGaehl, to photography
@RickGaehl@mstdn.social avatar

Dawn breaks over the Severn Estuary on a morning.

vandyke4ad,
@vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

@RickGaehl Experiencing dawn at Lydney Harbour isn’t on my bucket list, even though it’s only 25 minutes drive away.

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @jon Haven’t checked for dates in May, but Google Maps is saying there’s a 6:03 from La Ciotat to Hyères (via Toulon, obvs) tomorrow.
    The train from Toulon to Bandol and back to Toulon was quite busy last September- admittedly that was in the afternoon, though it was raining.

    jon, to random
    @jon@gruene.social avatar

    T&E, Allrail, Trainline, Flixtrain, Regiojet etc. have written to the European Commission demanding a reduction in track access charges - especially for cross border and night trains

    What impact would this have?

    For passengers and modal shift, pretty much none I reckon - especially short term, but it would help operators' balance sheets

    Explained in a blog post 👇
    https://jonworth.eu/if-you-reduced-track-access-charges-in-european-passenger-rail-very-little-would-happen-at-least-short-term/

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @jon Recently announced (?) new night train service from Brussels to Prague(via Amsterdam): European Sleeper. Their online booking site is hard work.

    jon, to random
    @jon@gruene.social avatar

    Welcome to 2024 Extra Day 21 March - Berzée - Mariembourg - Hirson - Aulnoye-Aymeries - Paris - Nuits-sous-Ravières

    Today I’m crossing these borders
    Anor 🇫🇷 - Momignies 🇧🇪

    Map of today’s route
    https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-extra-days-2024_1030682#10/50.0444/4.3259

    Today’s Live Blog
    https://crossborderrail.trainsforeurope.eu/live-blog-2024-extra-day-21-march-berzee-mariembourg-hirson-aulnoye-aymeries-paris-nuits-sous-ravieres/

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @jon Wasn’t that the terminus of an isolated rural metre gauge line of the once-extensive SNCV?

    Pagan_Animist, to random
    @Pagan_Animist@beekeeping.ninja avatar

    Feels like 22°F/-5.5C with the wind. I’m not at the top of the mountain, wth?

    March?

    Oh, yeah.

    Nice day if it doesn’t snow.

    Crap.
    Snowing.

    Traveling to Danville today.

    One and a half hours away..

    Hope y’all have a wonderful day!

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @Pagan_Animist We have 14C/56F in Gloucestershire, UK.
    Forecast to be colder by the end of the week - down to 8C/44F by Monday - weather’s getting ready for Easter.

    ErickaSimone, to random
    @ErickaSimone@mastodon.social avatar

    ….And THIS is why I was at a bargaining table yesterday, fighting for Musicians rights.

    Get into this story. Please support these kids. Please. Support us before takes over and is making all the music you hear. It’s getting weird and scary out here.

    From: @yogthos
    https://mas.to/@yogthos/112020432735682211

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @ErickaSimone @yogthos Julianne Regan, sometime singer with 1990ish folk-rock band, All About Eve, posted recently that for 32K streams, she got £2.61 (about $3.00).

    jon, to random
    @jon@gruene.social avatar

    Why third party rail ticket booking platforms are only inadvertently solving cross border ticketing problems

    They're answering: “Is there a train from A to B, and can we sell tickets for it?”

    I want to answer: “I want to go from A to B, how do I do that?”

    Blog post 👇
    https://jonworth.eu/trainline-rail-europe-and-omio-only-inadvertently-solving-cross-border-rail-ticketing-headaches/

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @jon Mark at Seat61 says Hendaye-San Sebastian train is buy the ticket at the station on the day (Euskotren €2.75).
    This is the route(London-Lisbon via Hendaye/Vigo/Porto) we’re hoping to use in September - can get to San Sebastian in one day, if we get an early Eurostar from London.
    “Option 2” on this page:
    https://www.seat61.com/Portugal.htm#london-to-lisbon-by-train-via-vigo

    jon, to random
    @jon@gruene.social avatar

    European Parliament, Michael Cramer report, 2015 - proposes 15 missing links to fix, of which 1 has been fixed

    Jon Worth's Top 20 from 2022 - 3 projects already fixed! FTW! 🎉
    https://crossborderrail.trainsforeurope.eu/borders/top20/

    And that Marseille-Ventimiglia-Genova timetables now work - I might have had a very tiny role there, in that I flagged the problem to the head of regional passenger transport at Trenitalia at an event in Roma, and in summer 2022 she was unaware of the problem

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @jon From Global Railway Review* via Apple News.

    • tends to regurgitate PR handouts, with added explanations for simpletons: “ballast (the stones that support the track)”

    https://apple.news/Ahsez0ljsN4uZ3Xbcrzi6DA

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @jon Can always hope.
    Don’t know if it still does, but in 2015, the Network Rail search also refused to show journeys with more than 3 changes (as in the article).
    E.g. Newhaven to March: only one train result on a Sunday (with 3 changes). Whereas, using the half-hourly service from Newhaven to Brighton, there was approx. one a hour findable from there (journey times varied).

    nyrath, to random
    @nyrath@spacey.space avatar

    Ofsted inspectors ‘make up evidence’ about a school’s performance when IT fails

    Inspector tells Observer investigation that top officials are aware that computer system crashes can wipe out data

    https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/feb/03/ofsted-inspectors-make-up-evidence-about-a-schools-performance-when-it-fails

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @nyrath Presumably, they have paid a large sum of money for the software.
    A competent programmer should be able to write code that autosaves at intervals (as often as one or two minutes), and creates a backup file.
    And there’s no reason why the data couldn’t be mirrored to a server, in the same way as photos on an iPhone are synced with iCloud.

    jon, to random
    @jon@gruene.social avatar

    Person I was due to meet in Paris just cancelled due to illness

    Could I go to Bourgogne earlier?

    SNCF 🤷‍♂️

    Hang around 1 hour 40 in Laroche Migennes FTW. Or pay a fortune for a TGV via Montbard

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @jon Laroche looks worth about 10 minutes of your attention.
    It does have a semi-circular “round-house” engine shed near the station - looks disused.
    A bit indistinct on Google Maps, so can’t tell if it has/had OHLE, like the one in Luzern.

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @jon Canal=flat🙂
    CC72000s must be getting a bit long in the tooth. Not as old as Class 37s, though.

    jon, to random
    @jon@gruene.social avatar

    Now I am trying to get my head around luggage scans on Eurostar trains

    Channel Tunnel security is determined, UK side, by the Channel Tunnel (Security) Order 1994 - PDF https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1994/570/made/data.pdf

    This stipulates what is not permitted in terms of behaviours, but not that every single bag on a Eurostar has to be controlled

    Could theoretically an operator not choose to control every bag?

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @jon Obviously they wouldn’t want to say what items qualify as suspicious.
    Never been asked by Eurostar what anything is - in September we had a travel kettle, a phone power bank, numerous phone power cables and wall plugs, plus our “travel” metal cutlery.
    Once, at Calais Eurotunnel, travelling by coach*, we were asked if there was a tent on our rucksack.

    • coach passengers should always be suspected of being terrorists or drug smugglers, seemingly.
    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @jon If they have to have a scanning procedure, how much duplication (no. of lanes) of this is needed, would depend on the number of passengers, though a successful operator would hope for full trainloads.
    A trainload is what Eurostar are dealing with, and that’s not particularly quick, to put it mildly.

    Haven’t been via Eurotunnel, since the 00s, but the, there was no scanning of car contents. There might have been a device for detecting explosives.

    dangillmor, to random
    @dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

    You probably never thought you'd find anyone with as thin a skin as this pathetic whiner of a billionaire...

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @Litzz11 @dangillmor By and large, far fewer nice people become billionaires.
    Possibly because they’re less inclined to screw over their employees and/or customers.

    jon, to random
    @jon@gruene.social avatar

    OK, so South East Europe has been re-planned and re-mapped - to take in two possible future lines between Greece and Albania, and Kosovo and Albania

    It means a few hundred km further in buses, but so be it! 🙂

    Keep the ideas and suggestions coming!

    Full map: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-south-east-europe_991708#8/41.763/21.689

    Background: https://crossborderrail.trainsforeurope.eu/seeurope/

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @jon There was talk sometime ago, about a new line in Greece to Igoumenitsa.
    Given that the Greek Government has failed to reopen* the almost completed (in 2009) Corinth to Kalamata line, this is probably not going to happen.

    • on Streetview, the infrastructure of the line in Tripoli looks pretty much the same now, as it did in 2009, when we passed through on an unexpected bus journey from Kyparissia to Athens, rather than train via Patras.
    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @jon Perhaps some things have changed, but at the time of our journey, the railway(OSE) seemed to go out of its way to way to make travel difficult:
    Hiding the timetable behind a premium rate phone line, instead of putting it on their website.
    Athens’ ticket office for booking Thessaloniki- Istanbul sleeper didn’t open until half an hour after the last possible train (to catch sleeper) to Thessaloniki had departed.
    (The latter, AFAIK, ceased a while ago)

    DrALJONES, to Israel
    @DrALJONES@mastodon.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @DrALJONES From my grandfather’s WWI diaries, the British army was in Palestine/Syria fighting Turkish and German soldiers.
    This fighting turned many of the people into refugees, who according to the diaries, feared the return of German soldiers the most.
    He describes a young couple bidding an emotional farewell to an old man, too frail to flee; and other refugees walking without shoes.
    Much as now.

    ianbetteridge, to random
    @ianbetteridge@writing.exchange avatar

    I've said it before, and I will say it again: if you can't manage remote workers, if you think that "remote = shirking", that is your failing as a manager and a leader, not the failing of remote work or your team. But leaders are so often reluctant to learn to adapt to new ideas.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/return-to-office-mandates-employees-managers-fight-messy-remote-work-2023-11?r=US&IR=T

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @exchgr @ianbetteridge Working from home is not that much removed from, say, a branch of a retail company that only has a couple of employees on site at the same time.

    msquebanh, to philosophy
    @msquebanh@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

    I need help with that I can use with trying to educate a few friends who I can't be around physically because they are referring to covid as seasonal. I know it's not. Please help me with finding some easy to understand links or graphics that I can send to them so they can learn why it is not like seasonal cold/flu. Search results had too many disinformation links; need help on links & graphics without disinfo.

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @msquebanh Try looking at posts from @chrischirp
    Posts include links to likely useful data.

    msquebanh, to random
    @msquebanh@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

    I'm heading back to hospital for another appointment. Leaving the heated blanket on for my domestic cat comfort nurse/emotional therapy kitty.

    vandyke4ad,
    @vandyke4ad@mas.to avatar

    @cthulku @msquebanh For one of the MRI scans of my prostate, I made a iTunes playlist of songs c.3 minutes in length, ordered alphabetically by artists. This made it easy to know how much time had passed.

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